Course Details

Course offered Winter 2012

Honors 391 A: "I am Charlotte Simmons": An Interactive Health Seminar Based on the Novel by Tom Wolfe (A&H / SSc / NSc)

Honors 391 A: "I am Charlotte Simmons": An Interactive Health Seminar Based on the Novel by Tom Wolfe (A&H / SSc / NSc)

SLN 14359 (View UW registration info »)

Clarence Spigner (Health Services)
Office: H-692 Health Sciences Building, Box 357660
Phone: 206 616-2948
Email: cspigner@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 30 students

Honors Credit Type

Students who take this course should be open to discussing controversial issues of college life.
This seminar will engage in intense discussion about student life and encompass key aspects of health and wellbeing. The framework is the controversial novel, I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe, that chronicles the world view of an 18 year-old undergraduate female, Charlotte Simmons, and her first year at a northeastern college. The highly readable work addresses college campus issues including self esteem, sexual risk-taking, cultures of drinking, date-rape, pathological narcissism, depression, disclosure, student-athletes, elitism, sororicide and fraternities, social support, and family-ties. These social dynamics are reflected in brutal, outrageous and stylistic formats in Charlotte’s Alice in Wonderland initiation into year-one of undergraduate life. A chronology of events builds in the 34 chapter novel to inform a deeper understanding of the human condition. In this course/seminar, health education theories serve are frameworks; such as Social Learning or Cognitive Theory, the Theory of Reasoned Action, the Stages of Change or Trans-theoretical Model, and the Health Belief Model.

The Socratic approach is employed to give students a voice. Students must bring the maturity and intellect to critically examine both the summit and the pitfalls of campus life.